Light

Hanuka is now being celebrated, the annual Jewish festival of light. On this occasion we publish a fragment of the book Honey from the Rock written by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner . This chapter is originally titled The Light of Awareness and is a great example of the way Kushner deals with the Bible and the Jewish tradition, of his spiritual reading. In our opinion it is not only an excellent introduction to the meaning of Hanuka, but also an inspiring read for the coming Christian feast of “the Light that shines in the darkness”. The text we publish is to a large extent simplified. In order to make it shorter and easier to read we deleted almost all references and quotations in Hebrew. Naturally, we recommend you the entire book and Dr. Kushner’s website .

Moses and Elijah — they are the same man.

Separated only by generations, their situations and their soul-solutions are identical. They participate in the same archetype. They are shoots from one branch: Humanity. They are you and I. Ones to whom the light is shown.

Moses was the first of all the prophets; Elijah was (will be) the last. Moses redeemed us from Egyptian slavery. And Elijah will redeem us from life that struggles against death. They both gathered Israel about a mountain: Sinai and Carmel. Both were once the only ones who had not deserted the Holy One either for the calf or for Baal. And so they were away forty days and forty nights and came to the mountain of God: Horeb-Sinai. And God hid each of them in a cleft-cave of the rock that had been waiting for them since before the creation was completed.

And it was here that each man received one needle-thin beam of light — which was apparently all either one of them could withstand or that God meant to share.

And, thus impregnated with this awareness, each left the cleft-cave of the rock.

For God was not in wind or in the quake or in the fire. Just a whispering sound of breathing out heard in the darkness of some cleft-cave in the rock. And the thin ray of light.

The cave might be the womb of creation. Mother earth. The shaft of light might be the fertile seed. Father God, And the one in the cave, the child, is man.

There is a still earlier version of this lone man sealed in some ancient cave’s black hollow. Shielded from the blinding light of the Holy One Himself. Permitted for his own safety to see but a single needle-thin beam of holy light. Until he himself is full of light. So full that it streams from the holes in his face.

“. . . an empty vacuum was formed in the midst of the Ayn Sof
(The Infinite One) into which emanated a ray of light . . . which arranges itself both in concentric circles and in a unilinear structure, which is the form of Adam Kadmon . . . the primordial man . . . The Adam Kadmon serves as a kind of intermediary link between Ayn Sof, the light of whose substance continues to be active in him, and the hierarchy of worlds still to come . . . From the head of the Adam Kadmon tremendous lights shone forth and aligned themselves in rich and complex pat­terns.” (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, Keter Publishing, Jerusalem, 1974, pp. 131,137.)

“And as Moses came down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the pact, Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant. . .”

But no matter how delicate and gentle the Creator beams the light, it is always too much. In one version after another, the bestowing of the light results in some kind of shattering. In the Lurianic version, the vessels that were intended to carry the light of Adam Kadmon shat­tered, their shards scattering and falling, which is reminiscent of the biblical account:

“As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged, and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain”.

The light that had been engraved on them was now strewn amidst the rocks at the foot of the mountain.

The needle-thin beams of light that penetrate the caves in which
we hide from time to time, is the same light that is­sues from ourselves. Like Adam Kadmon, it streams from the openings in our face and in so doing transforms the world around us. The letters of a word. The setting of the sun. The face of a child. It is not in them. Nor is it in us. We are only its vessel. It issues from us and we glide among the objects of creation as a divine being. One divine one passing among other divine ones. Our respective light raising each other from one rung to the next. For light is more than just some opposite-of-darkness condition in which our eyes can see. Light is the medium of consciousness.

“It is consciousness raising itself from the dark oblivion of unconsciousness.” (Erich Neumann, “The Origins and History of Consciousness”, Princeton University Press, 1954, p. 6.)

Light is a metaphor for human awareness. Shining just between matter and energy. Being between space and time. Something which is not a thing.

Like fishes in water, we do not know the light is there.
For if every last bit of it were gone
There would be more than darkness.
There would be spiritual oblivion.
If it weren’t for You, O Lord, we would be blind.
“In Your Light do we see Light”.

It is no accident that all the great creation tales begin with light. Of all the things that the Creator might have first formed — mountains, waterfalls, stars, flowers, fruited plants, lions and lambs, leviathans and whirl-winds, single-celled creatures and man – He made light. First of all the Holy One fashioned consciousness.

Let us retell the story of this light which is a metaphor for spiritual awareness:

A light with which the Holy One began the creation. “Let there be light and there was light”. In the Zohar (the book of spiritual illumination) we read further of creation. “Some kind of dark flame – blinding flash – issued forth, from the innermost hiddennness – from the mystery of the Ayn-Sof, the Infinite One Himself…

A light that was so dazzling that by it Rabbi Juda, son of Rabbi Simon, taught that “man could gaze from one end of the universe to the other”.

A light so powerful that it “shattered earthly vessels”.

A light that if it fell into the hands of the wicked could return creation itself back to primordial chaos. A light that therefore had to be hidden away. “And God made a separation”…

A light that was set aside for the Tsadikim. “Light is sown for the righteous”.

A light whose appearance initiates creation. But it is a creation only able to withstand a tiny bit of light. Therefore the light had to be concealed. And so it is that darkness and incompletion and separation are the price of this world. While light initiates existence, existence conceals light.

“For with the appearance of the light being began, But with the concealment of the light all manner of individuated existence was created . . . Just this is the mystery of the work of creation; And one “who is able to understand will understand”.

A light imprisoned in the shards of this created world, waiting for us to free it. Returning itself and us to the Creator.

A light so awesome that even a fraction of its splendor — just so much as a ray the thinness of a needle is all any of us need for unimaginable spiritual illumination.

A light that is shown to each soul before it enters the world and a light that those who have come very close to death and returned, tell of seeing.

A light that flickers at the conclusion of each Shabbos amidst the twisted wicks of the Havdalla candle.

A light by which we need fear death no more than the in­evitable darkness that begins each night.

A light in which we can reenvision our own ultimate transformation.

In other words, a light by which we experience our crea­tion and our Creator.

And toward which we yearn as does a plant for sunlight, as our ultimate destiny and fulfillment.

“You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for light, in order that there should be an eternal light”.

It is as if the One — who is Light — Left a trace of Himself in His creation at the beginning, A souvenir, to see if it would grow.

“What use is made of oil? It is put into a lamp, and then the two together give light as though they were one. Hence, the Holy One will say to Israel, “My children, since my light is your light, and your light is my light, let us go together – you and I – and give light to Zion: “Arise , give light, for your light has come.

Praised are You O Lord the [only] one who forms Light”.

The First Light

When one is born he emerges into the light of day. It must surely be dazzling and awesome. So the little one looks around with unfocused eyes and then closes them in order to rest.

Not long ago when our third child, Lev, was born we wanted things to be gentle. There were to be no bright lights or loud noises. No holding him upside down or making him cry. And right after he was born we placed him on Karen’s stomach and spoke soft words of joy and welcome, all the while caressing his tiny body. He did not cry at all. And only a few minutes later did he open his eyes. He looked all around and now smiling he closed his eyes.

But the light of consciousness with which the world began is yet incomplete. Hidden. Imprisoned. Depending on us. For the Adam-man who left the gar­den was only partly aware. And, we might say, perhaps only therefore, partly created. Even as we, his children, spend our days in wasted unawareness.

To become aware is to come closer to the Creator. The Holy One. Source of all awareness light. Who is Him­self of pure
eternal light. To become aware is to join the Holy One in the act of creating oneself.

With a divine prayer were we created,
That the light of awareness should not go out.
Many other worlds were created before this one
But each one of them failed.

Until at last the Creator
Made something a little like Himself:
Light in the shape of a person.

For you see,
We are the result of the desire of awareness, And the prayer of the Creator, To comprehend itself.

We are the reification of the inexorable divine urge To create consciousness. And thereby fulfill itself.

For consciousness — and You and I — and God — Live to create more light.

In the beginning there was light. The Holy One’s urge to create and our eternal yearning to behold creation. But if no one was present at creation, then each of us must know of God’s world-making from within ourselves. In which case everyone, including you and me, were there. And are there. To the extent that we are spiritually con­scious. Such is the holy mystery of awareness.

Shine it out into space and,
As our visionaries are beginning to understand,
It will ultimately define a perfect circle,
Which will return undiminished to its Creator.
Each one of us at each moment stands between the
beginning and the end, At the center of a circle. In the middle of a sphere of light. (To the extent that we are aware) Light is to unawareness what Holiness is to the profane world.